Lame response from Laming review on social care

American research suggests that deaf children are three to four times more likely to be abused than other children. And research from the University of Manchester suggests that deaf children are invisible on the social care radar.

So you would think that a major review into child protection arrangements in England would have something to say about ensuring that social workers and the general workforce know how to ensure deaf children are safe from harm.

Nope. Nada. Zilch.

Lord Laming published a reveiw of child protection arrangements last week, following the Baby P tragedy last year. NDCS and NSPCC submitted a lengthy response highlighting the vulnerability of deaf children. Sadly, the review makes no recommendations that directly address the needs of deaf children. They just don’t seem to figure as a priority worth highlighting.

A huge missed opportunity, and very disappointing. We intend to write to the Government to ask how, in implementing the Laming review, deaf children will benefit.

Government drops hint on acoustics testing…

This week, the Government suggested it might be poised to introduce pre-completion acoustic testing in all new schools. If this is the case, then one of the campaign aims for NDCS’s Sounds good? campaign will have been met. Yay!

This came about through an answer to a parliamentary question where the Minster for Schools and Learners said “we are considering the possibility of strengthening the recommendation that all schools should be subjected to pre-completion acoustic testing”. The question was tabled by Rosie Cooper MP who, incidentally, is a daughter of deaf parents.

Whilst it’s not a firm commitment, it would be odd for the Government to raise expectations if it thought it would probably dash them. It would be a bit like leaving birthday candles on the kitchen table for your child and then failing to come up with a birthday cake to go with it.

My job is now to keep the pressure on, try and get a firmer commitment on acoustic testing and make sure the Government turns up soon with a decent birthday cake. Ideally, a chocolate one. A quadruple chocolate cookie cake, if possible.

Trying to change the law on Ofsted

I mentioned that we’re trying to get the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill amended so that Ofsted can’t relax the inspection process for “good/outstanding” schools unless the inspector knows their stuff about deafness, and unless provision for children with special educational needs is also good/outstanding.

Well, we’ve taken the first step by drafting and suggesting an amendment. We’ve given it to a MP, Annette Brooke who has been a big supporter in the past and happily, she has agreed to put forward the amendment. It will get debated later this month by a committee of MPs who are scrutinising the Bill in more detail. Hopefully they will agree it’s a good idea.

Our amendment will change clause 210. And the committee has yet to get to clause 40 and they meet twice a week – so I suspect it will be a while before get to debate it though. So in the meantime, I’ve been drafting a briefing that tries to sell the case for this amendment and will be sending it out to MPs this week.

Will keep updating on the progress on this one – so watch this space.

NDCS interview with Shameless deaf actor

The NDCS website has an interview with Louis Kissaun, the actor who plays Danny, the new deaf character in Shameless. Has some interesting comments on what it was like being deaf, working on the Shameless set. No exclusives on what his character’s hidden agenda is though…

Seems like a great role model for deaf children and young people.

Breakthrough on BBC online video news stories

I’ve now had not one but two replies from the BBC about my complaint about BBC news online putting up online video stories about deaf children without subtitles or a transcript. The guy was open, helpful, apologetic and seemed as frustrated as I was that this had happened again. The explanation? Regional reports and producers and the online journalists failing to get it, and there being no one person to knock heads together to make sure they all do this. BBC bureaucracy, apparently.

And then in the second email, I was told that he’d spoken to the head of our regional newsrooms who sees no problem in trying to resolve the issue and will be asking staff to address this and make sure access is provided to video stories about deaf children.

Victory! I’m very happy. It’s not often I get a reasonably positive response to a complaint I’ve make. So hats off to the BBC. I guess being an angry deaf person can get you results sometimes…

I remain vigilante though… And if you spot any more examples of BBC online news stories without access, please let me know.

Deaf children and Ofsted: inspecting the inspectors

Have been spending a lot of time recently on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill – which I call the ASCL Bill for short, mainly because I can never hit the ‘c’ bit in Apprenticeships without falling over my words, and sometimes literally just falling over.

It’s the first time as a campaigns officer I’ve got my teeth into looking at detail through a Bill and exploring possible changes and amendments to it – so I’m on an exciting learning curve. One change we’re leading on is the proposal around the education inspection agency Ofsted which touches on one of our objectives for our Close the Gap campaign.

The Bill proposes that schools get a ‘health check’ rather than a full blown inspection if they are ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. So we have tabled an amendment to the draft law that would have the effect of making school health checks conditional on whether the school has been inspected by someone who has good awareness of the needs of children with special educational needs. This is because NDCS we’ve come across several examples in the past of units for deaf children being inspected by people who clearly knew nothing about deafness and did not even know how to communicate with deaf children. Any conclusions they make are clearly not going to be particularly helpful.

Being realistic, and me being cynical, I think it’s unlikely the amendment will be accepted by the Government. But at the very least, there will be a helpful debate on this in Parliament and it will be a powerful means of getting our point on this across to decision makers.

I’ve also attended a few meetings on the ASCL Bill with a range of other charities to see how we can link up. One issue that I hadn’t spotted before – but now have thanks to these meetings – is that the Bill would require you to have a good GCSE in English to do an advanced apprenticeship. There is apparently no exception for children whose disability makes it much less likely for them to get a good GCSE in English. For deaf children whose first language is British Sign Language, it’s a clear, discriminatory barrier to doing an apprenticeship. So it’s likely we’ll be making noises about this too.

The ASCL Bill is making its way through Parliament now – so watch this space.

Update – Shameless: new deaf character on the telly!

Make sure you watch Shameless on Channel 4 on Tuesday evening at 10pm to see the new deaf character who will be sticking around for a few episodes. The character, Danny, and the actor playing him, Louis Kissaun, both use British Sign Language as their main language. The Guardian had a short interview with the guy last week and the Shameless website has some basic information too.

And I enjoyed an exclusive preview of the showing last Tuesday! By ‘exclusive’, I, of course mean, I watched it on E4, which I forgot sometimes showed programmes a week in advance if you were willing to stay up until the wee hours of the morning. As a result of this, there has already been a bit of chatter about it online. Depressingly, some of it is already nitpicking and missing the bigger point about having deaf role models on TV. Anyhow, without giving away too much, I thought the new character was great and did a good job of showing the communication barriers experienced by deaf people. I’m hooked.

It’s not for the faint-hearted though. This being Shameless, Danny gets to use a few naughty words. And there’s also a heroin storyline going on with one of the other characters. Fun for all the family!

DCSF consultation convulsions vol. 3: the primary curriculum

Another day, another consultation… The latest is the independent review into the primary curriculum Sir Jim Rose. An interim report was published late last year and the deadline for comments passed over the weekend.

So what did Sir Jim Rose have to say about children with special educational needs and the primary curriculum? Given that one in five children are reported to have some form of special educational need, it’s obviously going to be high on the agenda when considering how the primary curriculum should be reformed and made relevant to everyone. Yes?

Well, here’s the thing. There was virtually no mention. No mention of deaf children, and no mention of any other group who might have additional needs.

OK, so it’s only an interim report. But if you’re going to looking at major reforms of the primary curriculum, surely you’re going to want to consider how everyone is going to access this new curriculum, and make recommendations for how this will be met FROM THE OUTSET. Not afterwards. And definitely not after the whole thing has been implemented on the ground.

The Government has done this before – by introducing phonics as a new method of teaching literacy without considering how this would work for deaf children.

Our response has been to say you can’t get away with treating deaf children as an afterthought. No new curriculum initiatives should be introduced unless without first considering – at the very beginning – how the needs of all children can be met.

Here’s hoping someone in the review team heeds this point.